Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group

The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (MICG/GICM) was a Salafi jihadist group from Morocco with links to al-Qaeda.

History
The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group was founded in the 1990s with the goal of establishing a fundamentalist Islamist regime in Morocco, and it was one of many North African terrorist groups formed during the tenure of the Taliban, along with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in Algeria, Tunisian Combat Group (TCG) in Tunisia, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyyah in Egypt, and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya. The MICG was labelled by the United Nations as a terrorist group in 2002 following 9/11 due to its affiliation with al-Qaeda, and on 16 May 2003 the MICG splintergroup Salafia Jihadia killed 33 people in a suicide bombing spree by 12 people. In 2004, Salafia Jihadia also carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombings, killing 191 people in a series of backpack bomb explosions on trains. Hasan el Haski, an MICG member, was responsible for the planning of both attacks, and the perpetrators of the 2004 train bombings were arrested by the government of Spain. However, only in 2005 did the United Kingdom and Israel recognize MICG as a terrorist group, with the United States ironically being the last to designate it in 2013.